Acrylonitrile (ACN) is a large-scale industrial product which is manufactured almost exclusively by ammoxidation of propene in accordance with the following equation: EQU CH.sub.2 .dbd.CH--CH.sub.3 +NH.sub.3 +1/2 O.sub.2 CH.sub.2 .dbd.CH--CN+3 H.sub.2 O.
Theoretically, about one ton of water is also formed per tonne of ACN. Because the selectivity for the desired ACN is not 100%, however, the quantity of water is greater and amounts to about 1.5 tons or more per ton of ACN. This effluent is loaded with undesired by-products, which include nicotinonitrile (molecular weight MW =104), fumarodinitrile (MW=78), succinodinitrile (MW =80), 3-picoline (MW=93) and 1-H-pyrazole (MW=68).
Although considerable internal water circulations are required for recovering the acrylonitrile, for example for quenching the hot reactor exit gases and for separating off acrylonitrile on the one hand and, on the other hand, acetonitrile and hydrogen cyanide by extractive distillation, for which purpose effluents can also be used which contain impurities internal to the system. It is necessary in any case, in order to avoid overfilling of these water circulations, to remove the water of reaction, forming in accordance with the above equation, per unit time from the overall process. It is usual in many cases to subject the effluent ultimately arising after passage through the said internal circulations to an effluent distillation, a vapour condensate and a bottom exit stream, more heavily loaded with waste materials, being obtained. An effluent highly loaded with waste materials is taken off at a suitable place in the overall process and fed to the waste incineration, in order to maintain the concentration level of waste materials in the internal circulations at a suitable level. This rate passed to the waste incineration and the vapour condensate together must always correspond to the water of reaction newly forming per unit time.
The vapour condensate contains, inter alia, the by products listed above by name. Further purification by distillation is not possible because of the volatility of these by-products with steam; the vapour condensate must therefore be disposed of in this form. For this purpose, this vapour condensate is, for example, passed into a biological treatment plant. However, the abovementioned organic nitrogen compounds as by-products, which also include ammonia and cyanide, represent a heavy load for a treatment plant even with adapted microorganisms and are not completely degraded.
According to the current ecology concept, it was therefore desirable further to lower the proportion of the said by-products in the effluent, in order to relieve the downstream biological treatment plant and to enable it to operate more effectively. It has been found, surprisingly, that this aim can be achieved in such a way that acrylonitrile effluents, which are taken off as vapour condensate, can be subjected to reverse osmosis at a membrane.
Admittedly, it is known in principle that effluents can be purified by reverse osmosis. In this case, both constituents present in the ion form and neutral organic molecules are retained. For ionic constituents, the retention in the effluent concentrate is in the range from 95 to 99%; however, the retention of ionic constituents plays only a subordinate part in a vapour condensate. For neutral molecules, however, this retention is highly dependent, inter alia, on the molecular weight. A molecular weight of at least 90, and better at least 100, is in general regarded as the lower limit for efficient retention, while organic neutral molecules of lower molecular weight already show significant breakthrough through the membrane.